Rock Band 4 Screenshots Released; Gameplay Coming Soon

Announced back in March, Rock Band 4 has quickly become one of the most hotly anticipated games of the year. Harmonix‘s upcoming game joins Guitar Hero Live on the ‘music rhythm revival’ tour as both games will be released later in 2015.

Unlike Guitar Hero Live, though, we don’t know much about Rock Band 4. Harmonix previously revealed the game would be in glorious 1080p HD at 60 FPS and that Mad Catz, the company that makes the RB instruments, would be on co-publishing duties, but in terms of actual gameplay we’ve been in the dark. Until now, that is, as Harmonix has revealed several Rock Band 4 features ahead of an upcoming gameplay trailer.

Rock Band 4 Gameplay Features

The new RB info comes from IGN, who recently took a team to Harmonix’s studios to go and rock out with the game themselves. The main point made in their preview is that although previous Rock Band games were solid they didn’t let us express ourselves very well. Rock Band 4 Product Manager Daniel Sussman says that “giving people that sense of ownership of the song is really important, and it’s a huge part of the fantasy”.

Harmonix is remedying this in terms of vocals by bringing back vocal harmonies after they were introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band. A team of fans has created harmonies for every single Rock Band song ever and they’ve given all of the data to Harmonix for free, so the entire RB back catalogue is now harmony friendly. Additionally, Rock Band 4‘s creative lead Greg LoPiccolo explains that now, “you don’t have to stick with the prescribed part; you can make up your own harmonies on the fly, and as long as you sing them in tune, the game will give you credit for it”.

In terms of drum solos, players of previous Rock Band games were running into trouble when the game asked them to do their own drum fills. In Rock Band 4, if you have enough Overdrive, the game will throw random fills at you based on the sort of song you’re playing. LoPiccolo told IGN that “It basically drops into every Rock Band song that we have ever authored” so no matter what track you’re playing, from past or present, the game has drummers covered.

Intriguingly, the publication also called Rock Band 4‘s campaign the “most interesting reach in the gameplay design department” and said that it’s like “a Rock Band RPG”. More will be revealed on May 15 when the first Rock Band 4 gameplay trailer is released, so look out for that here.